Control of key pecking by the duration of a visual stimulus

Pigeons' key peck were brought under the control of the duration of a visual stimulus in one-key and two-key procedures. In the one-key procedure, pecks were reinforeced after presentations of a long-duration stimulus but not after presentations of a short-duration stimulus. In the two-key procedure, left-key pecks were reinforced after the long-duration stimulus and right-key pecks after the short-duration stimulus. In both procedures, the long-duration stimulus was 10 sec, and the short-duration stimulus was increased from 1 to 8 sec in1-sec steps. Discriminative control developed with both procedures, but with greater acuracy in the two-key procedures, in which a difference threshold was obtained at short-duration values between 7 and 8 sec, or about 2.5 sec shorter than the long-duration stimulus.